It may surprise some of the people who know me, but I haven't always been a baking and cooking enthusiast. Through high school, I regularly ate parmesan noodles and grilled cheese sandwiches. When I was a single girl, I was all about pasta, pasta, and more pasta. I bought treats from the grocery store. (I know, right? I couldn't even splurge for bakery treats.) If I made chocolate chip cookies, it was purely so I could store the dough in fridge and chow down on it over a couple of days. (I wanted to say a week there to make myself look a little better but we're all friends here, right?) And then when I got too lazy to do that, I bought the packaged cookie dough (again from the store) and kept that in my fridge. I'm not saying that I never baked...every year before Christmas, my mom and I made a large assortment of cookies from her 1974 red Betty Crocker cookbook that she got from her mom at her bridal shower, I made boxed brownies, and cakes from mixes. My first cookbooks were ones on how to doctor up cake mixes, recipes for your bread machine, Cooking for One (yikes! Singledom!), and Weight Watchers for when I thought I weighed more than I should, which is extremely ironic because now I wish that I weighed what I weighed back then and I don't have that cookbook anymore. In fact, I don't think I ever made a recipe from it either. So when did I make the turn you ask? I think it was mainly when I started dating my now-husband, Shamus. I knew that I couldn't get away with serving pasta for every meal (although I tried and now he has a serious aversion to it). Cooking for two is so much more fun and interesting than cooking for yourself. I started baking more regularly, too. He loves chocolate chip cookies, so I set out to find the perfect recipe since I actually had to start baking my cookies. I took a community college cake decorating class before I met him and learned some good tricks and slowly started to bake more often. Getting a Kitchen Aid mixer certainly helped me want to bake more often. One day I was baking with a friend, and we were going to make sugar cookies and oatmeal raisin cookies. I was making my family recipe for the sugar cookies, but I wanted to find a great recipe for soft and flavorful oatmeal raisin cookies. I did some internet hunting and found this one. I'm in love with these. They're soft and stay soft (because that's what makes a good cookie in my opinion), and they have wonderful spices. They're perfect at any time of the year, but they're especially great during fall with lots of cinnamon and cloves. If you have raisins that have been sitting in your pantry for awhile (guilty!), letting them soak in hot water for about 10 minutes really plumps them up and softens them. I highly recommend it.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies RecipeMakes about 40 cookiesPrint this recipe1 cup butter, softened1 cup brown sugar, packed1/2 cup sugar2 eggs1 teaspoon vanilla1 1/2 cups all purpose flour1 teaspoon baking soda1 teaspoon cinnamon1/2 teaspoon ground cloves1/2 teaspoon salt3 cups oats1 cup raisinsPreheat your oven to 350 degrees and spray baking sheets with non-stick spray. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugars with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add in the eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl as needed. Add in the vanilla, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and salt and mix until combined. Mix in the flour and then add the oats. Once the oats are fully incorporated, mix in the raisins. Form the cookie dough into one-inch balls and place 2 inches apart from each other on the greased cookie sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the edges are lightly brown. Cool for two minutes on the sheet before removing to a flat surface to cool completely. Store in an airtight container or bag. Source: I don't remember where I got it...maybe Allrecipes? If you know, please tell me!

Great tip with the raisins, I'll be using that from now on... My usual recipe for these cookies has no flour in it, so I';ll be experimenting on the family with this variation today. For really quick small batches I use my Airfryer, which cooks in about 8 mins. For perfection serve with good vanilla ice creammmmmmmmmm.

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Welcome!

Cooking is fun and easy at high altitude, but baking can be frustrating. About 90% of my recipes work everywhere, but some are adjusted so us mountain dwellers can enjoy baked goods from scratch. I hope you find great recipes on here for your family, and I'll let you know if any are adjusted for high altitude.